I teach at Lehigh University in eastern Pennsylvania. I work on British colonialism, modernism, postcolonial/global literature, and the digital humanities. Recent courses I have taught include Transatlantic Modernism, Asian Americans in Literature and Popular Culture, and "What Am I Doing Here? The Value of a Liberal Arts Education."

The concept of a pan-South Asian identity has been of only limited success as a regional marker within the Indian subcontinent, but it has emerged as a widely-used, if still controversial term in the South Asian diaspora. Conceptual debates over the term have occurred in academia, as part of ongoing debates about interdisciplinarity and "Area Studies," as we see in arguments by Vijay Prashad, Nicholas Dirks, and others. Versions of these debates have also been circulating outside of academia, in online South Asia-oriented forums such as Sulekha.com, and on the weblog Sepiamutiny.com. This talk explores the ways in which debates in these online environments parallel academic debates, and in some cases challenge social theorists to reconsider their approach to terminology surrounding ethnic identity, geopolitical regionalism, and transnational political affiliation.

7 comments:

Don't know how formal the talk will be or this is too short of notice, but is there a chance the talk (and presumed ensuing discussion) could be recorded? For those of us nerds in the Midwest (and elsewhere) unable to attend. Either way, good luck and I hope there will at least be a recap or somethin' on the blog. I'm gonna pass it along to my Sri Lankan American friend at UPenn, though.

Let me add my voice to the chorus: would you be able to email me a copy of the talk and/or will you post it on your blog any time soon? It's already been a couple of months (unless it really _is_ for 2009!)...

Links, Selected Posts

Amardeep Singh, Associate Professor of English at Lehigh UniversityOn Twitter

I have begun work on a Digital archive I am calling "The Kiplings and India." I started last summer with a preliminary Wordpress site here: here. Working with a team of graduate research assistants, we have begun building the site proper in Scalar here.